


Workin’ on Our Night Moves

by LT_Aldo_Raine



Series: A Year in the Life [5]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Boys with feelings, Canon Compliant, Foxholes, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, M/M, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24478003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LT_Aldo_Raine/pseuds/LT_Aldo_Raine
Summary: Dick frowned, and Lewis held his hands up in mock surrender, the burning embers of his cigarette blindingly bright in the darkness of the witching hour, the moonlight its only accompaniment. “I’ve been behaving, haven’t I?”OR: Something happens during one of those long and uncomfortable nights out on field training.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: A Year in the Life [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618882
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Workin’ on Our Night Moves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fiorediloto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorediloto/gifts).



> Title inspired by Bob Seger's _Night Moves_. Details about the War Department field exercises stolen from Dick’s book. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it, Fio! <3

July 14, 1943 – Kentucky, somewhere outside of Camp Breckinridge

He heard the footsteps long before the body slid down into his foxhole. It was Lewis. Dick should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. Still, due to either the routine of it or some internal understanding that he should at least maintain the pretense of propriety, the redhead was compelled to ask, “What are you doing here, Lew?”

Lewis fished around inside his jacket for a cigarette, dipped his head low inside Dick’s foxhole and cupped his hands in a half-hearted attempt to shield the flame from his lighter as he burned the tip of the Lucky Strike until it smoldered and he could take a long drag, lips quirked up in the manner in which Dick had come to realize meant that Lew was pleased with himself. “Didn’t you hear, Dick? We’re in the army.”

Dick barely suppressed the unimpressed roll of his eyes and waited.

Cigarette between two fingers, Lewis made a vague waving motion with his hands. “Oh, you know. Status report…a morale check…got lost on the way back to my foxhole from taking a leak. Take your pick.” Then, Lewis’s voice dropped an octave or two and took on an edge of mockery. “All quiet on the Western Front.” He grinned like a madman, teeth shining beneath the light of a Kentucky summer moon along with the whites of his eyes.

Dick couldn’t help but feel more than a little tickled by the sight, though he hoped he’d schooled his features enough to conceal his delight. Couldn’t let it go to the other man’s head and all. Lewis already knew he held entirely too much sway over Dick, for all that the intelligence officer praised the redhead for being incorruptible.

“I’ve never seen that movie,” replied Dick.

“Eh.” Lewis took another drag and shrugged his shoulder against Dick’s, the fabric of their jackets rustling in the quiet. “The book was better.”

Nestled down in his foxhole, Dick’s lower back and hips had long since begun to ache, and his bottom and the backs of his thighs had fallen asleep hours ago. He shifted to relieve some of the tension in his muscles and spine. It was a minimal movement—not much wiggle room in foxholes, especially with another body pressed along his right side—and, it sent a tingling sensation rippling throughout his numbed backside, if only for a moment. Seconds later, the painful strain was back, and Dick forced himself to swallow a sigh.

What had he expected? A four-post bed? Satin sheets? If he couldn’t handle the damp foothills of the American South, Dick didn’t have much hope of survival on the war front. His face must have betrayed his discomfort if Lewis’s smirk was any indication.

“Not exactly the Ritz, am I right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” replied Dick with a touch of wryness to his tone. Although he knew perfectly well that Dick had never seen luxury the likes of New York City’s and Chicago’s finest hotels, Lewis couldn’t resist the gentle teasing.

“Aw, come on, a little farm boy like you? Thought you’d feel right at home in the dirt.” There was a smile behind Lewis’s words and a merry twinkle in his eye, the half-burned cigarette butt hanging from his lips. The young officer was a man of many pleasures, but the redhead had come to learn that there were few things in life that Lewis Nixon enjoyed more than teasing Dick.

“No,” said Dick, quite seriously. “This dirt—” He ran his fingers over the wall of earth to his left, catching a few grains underneath his fingernails. “—is different.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Our dirt had pigs in it.” 

Lewis gave a startled laugh, which he quickly worked to smother in his hands, dropping his cigarette on his pants’ leg with a muffled curse. Retrieving the fallen stub of his cigarette, Lewis relit the Lucky Strike and inhaled another small puff of smoke. Dick could feel Lewis studying him as he did so, observing the stiff set of his freckled shoulders, the tension in his spine, the tightness of the lines on his youthful, All-American face. After a thoughtful beat, Lewis plucked the fag from his lips and asked, “What’s the matter, Dick? War games not all you hoped they’d be?”

Dick’s reply was instantaneous. “These aren’t meant to be games, Lew. This is serious. This training could save these men’s lives.” He looked at his dark-haired friend, pointedly. “And yours.”

Lewis held his hands up in mock surrender, the burning embers of his cigarette blindingly bright in the darkness of the witching hour, the moonlight its only accompaniment. “I’ve been behaving, haven’t I?”

Since their arrival at Camp Sturgis at the end of May, the War Department had had Easy Company schlepping it all across Kentucky and Tennessee for nearly two months as part of the largest and most realistic combined paratrooper and glide-born exercises to date. Easy was part of the Red Forces, oppositional to the Blue Forces, and day after day, they’d been conducting extended field marches, night maneuvers, establishing defensive perimeters—hell, they’d done just about everything but participated in open combat at this point. 

“I’m just glad we don’t have to cross any more rivers. Pretty sure I’ve still got swamp ass from our wade through the Cumberland,” mumbled Lewis, shifting with a grimace to underscore his point. These past few weeks had seemed like hell—all mosquitoes eating their ankles and plucking ticks off their necks and eating shitty K- and D-rations and sleeping on the damp, hard ground. But they’d made it—and they’d done a hell of a job. Tonight was Easy’s last night in the wilderness before the final march to Camp Breckinridge the following day, where the field exercise would officially end and the men would each receive a ten-day furlough. “Hell, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of not sleeping, wearing filthy clothes, and trudging all over these damn forests. I swear, my feet have never been so sore in my _life_ —not even on that damn Atlanta march.”

Lewis sighed, playfully accentuating the wistful quality of his own voice. “I’d like a hot shower, a decent meal, and, Jesus, the stiffest drink of your life. Well—,“ he amended with a smirk. “Not _your_ life, but I think you get the point.”

A slow, easy smile rose on Dick’s lips. “I’ll take you up on the hot shower. Wouldn’t mind a night in a real bed, either.”

Lewis gave a lopsided grin, rubbing his own hip from the stiffness of foxhole-sitting. “Barrack mattresses don’t sound so bad now, do they?” Then, he added, with only a slight coloring of contempt in his tone, “Even if they are hardly better than a prison cot.”

Dick hummed his agreement, then they settled into a comfortable silence, the pair of them. For a long, quiet stretch of indeterminate time, Dick and Lewis were content with stillness and stargazing and the comfort afforded by the presence of the man beside him. Dick couldn’t account for his friend’s thoughts, but his own were with the men. Easy had performed well over the last few weeks, despite Herr Black Swan’s inability to make rational decisions under pressure, especially when engaged in the field. Pushing his vexation at Sobel aside, Dick reflected on the top performers in Easy, boys like Shifty Powers, Bull Randleman, Don Malarkey, Floyd Talbert, and so many others. They were a fine lot, and Dick was proud to be counted among them. Even prouder still at how the men had conducted themselves during the War Department’s extended exercises. Now that the maneuvers were coming to a close, Dick couldn’t deny that he felt a little disappointed.

Having been exposed to life in the field, Dick understood that there was much to be desired as Lewis had lamented—a warm bed, a hot meal. But out there in the woods, for the first time since he’d completed his first jump from a C-47, Dick felt alive. The steady thrum of pressure out in the field had giving Dick a renewed sense of purpose. He couldn’t simply return to barracks and map exercises, not when he now knew that he and his men could not only hack it but could _excel_ as a deployed unit. When they arrived at Breckinridge tomorrow, Dick knew that his chest would shrivel, that his internal light would diminish just so. He would miss this—the closeness to his men, to Lewis.

Suddenly, Dick was overwhelmed with gratitude at his friend’s insight. Lewis came to Dick’s foxhole because he, too, understood that tonight was their last night, their last chance to press close together in a foxhole beneath a cloudless, starry sky, to merely exist in this manner in a shared space. They would ship out soon, and who knew what the war would hold for the pair of them? They’d had a lot of good luck so far—meeting during OCS at Benning, having the good fortune to both make it into the Airborne and arriving at Toccoa together, much less joining the same company, and despite Lewis’s transfer to battalion staff, still being able to spend significant time training and working together at Camp Mackall. But it was inevitable, Dick knew. Eventually, their luck would run out.

The abrupt thought emboldened Dick enough that he pressed against Lewis, chasing the last morsel of fellowship between them. Lewis didn’t seem to mind. With a soft sigh, he sunk against Dick, head still lulled back against the earthen wall of Dick’s foxhole, gaze skyward, though his eyes were fluttering, struggling to stay open.

When dark eyelashes finally rested against the curve of a pale cheek, Dick took the time to study his friend. Over the last year or so, Dick had come to know Lewis almost as well as he knew himself. On the surface, no two individuals were more diametrically opposed in temperament and lifestyle than Lewis and Dick. Yet, in spite of the staggering differences between them, Dick had come to discover that he and Lewis often shared the same thoughts and feelings about everything from the quality of mess hall meals to the operational integrity of field maneuvers to the softness of Ingrid Bergman’s curls, even if Lewis was usually more _vocal_ about their mutual opinions. Bottom line, Dick and Lewis understood one another, and their friendship was an easy, natural affair, one that evolved of its own accord, silently but doggedly, until one day, Lewis was suddenly the most important person in Dick’s life.

Unlike Lewis, Dick did not have a wife. He had his parents and Annie, sure, but he had become someone independent of his family’s identity, and that someone just so happened to be inextricably linked to one Lewis Nixon, III. The thought of Kathy Nixon—fleeting though it was—swiftly curtailed Dick’s pleasant mood. If he tried to name it, Dick wouldn’t be able to readily surmise why mention of Lewis’s wife soured his stomach. Maybe it was because he knew that Lewis had been unfaithful with the occasional patriotute down in Columbus or when he was in California at Fort Ord. Or maybe, worser still, it was because Dick himself felt guilty, somehow. Perhaps, for so carelessly and ardently linking his life to Lewis’s for his own selfish purposes.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Unbeknownst to Dick, Lewis had long ceased with the pretense of a nap and had been gazing at his friend, watching the redhead’s introspection as it played out across his lean and freckled face. Dick had gotten a shade darker under the sun during the war games. Lewis thought the color suited him.

“Mhmm.” Dick flashed Lewis a tight-lipped smile. “Thinking about home.”

“Already? We haven’t even gone to war yet, buddy. Might wanna save the homesickness for after we ship out.”

Dick didn’t rise to Lewis teasing and instead allowed his eyes to drop. There were fresh bruises and scrapes on Lewis’s skin, not anything deep or serious, but signs and souvenirs from their time in the southern wilderness. Dick wondered if this was the first time in Lewis’s life that his flesh had been marred in such a way, the superficial scratches joining the well-formed callouses, courtesy of boot camp and beyond, on Lewis’s palms. Without thought, Dick reached over into his friend’s lap to poke one finger gently at the minor lesion across the back of Lewis’s left hand.

“Did you clean it?” His voice, though still quiet, had taken on a softer edge. Dick knew that Lewis wasn’t the type to be bothered enough to care for himself, despite the small field kit he carried.

“No.” Lewis’s voice was a meager squeak of a thing, and when Dick raised his eyes so as to meet his friend’s gaze, there was a startling vulnerability in Lewis’s gaze, one which he immediately attempted to mask with sarcasm and indifference. “Is this how you treat the girls, Dick? Drive out to some Pennsylvania cornfield and lay down in the back of your truck to look at the stars? Hold their hands and all?”

To punctuate his point, Lewis flipped his hand where it lay so that it faced upward, his fingers curving against Dick’s palm. Instinctively, Dick flattened his hand over Lewis’s, weaving their fingers together, the weight of their joined hands resting heavily in the other man’s lap. All of the breath in Lewis’s lungs escaped him at once. “ _Dick._ ”

Dazed and fixated upon the sight of their combined hands, Dick hesitated to respond.

Suddenly feeling quite incredulous, Lewis shook his head with a hollow, humorless laugh and squeezed Dick’s hand. “You have to know, you have…well, no, I suppose you don’t.” The dark-haired man leveled Dick with the most sincere look the redhead had ever seen on the other man, and when Lewis spoke, he did so plainly, so as not to be misunderstood, but also with a certain, unmistakable reverence that curled something warm low in Dick’s belly. “What do you think I’ve been doing all this time, Dick? While you watch them—,” He gestured to the surrounding area, to the men. “ _I_ watch _you._ ”

Dick swallowed, dryly. Absently, he thought about his canteen and rationing water and—his best friend smiled at him, fondly, and shook their entwined hands. “Look, we all know I’m not exactly the model GI, alright? I mean, Christ, Dick, why do you think I’m still here? What, you thought I was sticking around for the free food?” The way he says ‘food’ makes it clear Lewis’s opinion of the military grade culinary arts to which they had been subjected, and the gentle teasing was familiar and filled Dick with feelings of _right_ and _home_ and Dick wanted desperately to say something.

Thinking about their time in the service thus far, Dick’s mind conjured up notions of duty and honor and patriotism, but these images didn’t wholly align with the man he’d come to know as Lewis Nixon. There was no questioning that Lewis was fearless and brave and intelligent and that he, like all the others, would serve his country proudly when the time came. But Dick knew that his friend was not there for the glory of war or due to some innate sense of allegiance to America. Thinking back, Dick realized that some part of him always assumed that Lewis stayed to prove something to his father, if not to himself.

Lewis’s casual suggestion that he had stayed for another reason? Well, Dick didn’t know quite how to interpret or process that information.

Another, slower smile spread across Lewis’s face, pulling at the shadow of subtle that had already started to crop up that evening, despite the officer’s shave in the field earlier that day. “Jesus, you really are so naïve sometimes.”

An abrupt and harsh blush rose in Dick’s cheeks, and the redhead was instantly consumed by a sense of both defensiveness and vulnerability. Dick might have been a teetotaler to Lewis’s eternal delight, but that didn’t mean that Dick wasn’t every bit the grown man that Lewis was.

“I think you’ll find, Lew,” And geez, he really hated the childish ire bleeding through his voice. “—that I’m not as naïve as you think.”

He was rewarded with a fat grin, boyish and genuine, that made Lewis look several years younger, much less cynical—and a lot more hopeful. “I certainly hope so.” These were the last words that Lewis uttered before he took a sharp breath and leaned forward, closing the small distance between them in the foxhole to press his lips to Dick’s own.

The kiss was brief, but spectacular.

It was nothing more than dry, chapped lips and a firm but chaste pressure. Dick was sure that it was a quick affair, though time seemed suspended in that one, insane moment. With Kentucky dirt against his back and one of Lewis’s hands wrapped around his forearm, Dick’s stomach felt like it was carrying out its own special Fourth of July fireworks display. Everything was loud and bright, the earth shattering and a universe created anew around them. When Lewis drew away, eyes wide and unsure, lips parted in a noiseless pant, Dick had no clue how the whole damn division wasn’t woken by what had just transpired.

“Dick, say something, buddy.”

The redhead summarized. “You kissed me.”

Dick’s obvious declaration startled a laugh out of Lewis, who gave a shaky nod, and Dick recognized the other man’s nerves for what they were. “I’m not mad,” he hastened to declare to comfort Lewis and assuage his fears. “I’m not—”

“Mad,” Lewis finished for him. A stiff blanket of unease clung to the dark-haired man’s shoulders. “Right. And are you…you know, anything _else_?”

A million thoughts rushed to Dick’s mind at once. There were so many things he could say, but he had never been the especially loquacious type. He struggled for a moment, frozen in the foxhole, hands fisted on his thighs, and his mouth fell open in a helpless gesture. Dick watched Lewis swallow, watched his friend recede into himself.

“No? Okay. Okay, that’s… _okay._ I won’t, um. Sorry. Let’s just pretend this never happened, shall we?” When Lewis began to collect himself, readying to scramble out of the foxhole to beat a hasty retreat to his own, a panic—dark and deep—consumed Dick. “Don’t.” That this was a command was evident, and to support it, Dick secured Lewis by the jacket. “Don’t go.”

“No, that’s alright. I can’t just sit here.” Lewis mumbled something, but Dick only caught the word ‘mortifying’, and moved to crawl out of the hole once more.

“Lew, _please._ ”

When their eyes met, Dick prayed that his friend would somehow _get it,_ even if Dick couldn’t readily express himself, couldn’t understand or properly articulate just what it was that he was feeling. He just knew that he didn’t want Lewis to leave. Didn’t want anything to change between them for the worse. At the mouth of the foxhole, Lewis wavered, then, stiffly, he slumped down back into the earth. With a huff—at himself? at Dick?—, he fished out a familiar flask and took a long drink, pointedly avoiding Dick’s concerned gaze.

“I’d offer you a sip, but…” There was a harsh, heaviness to his words that made Dick flinch.

“I don’t want you to stay so that I can mock you, Lew.”

Dark eyes flashed his way, lips curving into a sneer. “Then, what? We’re just supposed to talk baseball now? Swap theories about the Hindenburg? Or maybe you wanna talk shop? Yeah, let’s chat about the Navy shooting down those paratroopers over Sicily? Or is it too late in the evening for fratricide? Hell, maybe we’ll get lucky, and the Navy’ll shoot _our_ planes down before we ever even see combat.”

“Lew—”

“No, look. I—I kissed you, alright? And—and we don’t have to make a big deal about it, but I can’t just sit here, _right now,_ and pretend like it didn’t happen. I need a bit of space, and all will be forgotten tomorrow, alright?”

A tense, silent beat lapsed within the foxhole, the Kentucky moon continuing to shine brightly above. In the wake of Lewis’s nervous caterwauling, Dick’s own riotous emotions had settled somewhat, his thoughts suddenly clear and unified. His best friend stared at him, expectantly. “Well?”

“No.”

“No? Fuck you. Whatta ya mean ‘no’? No, _what_?”

“I don’t want to forget.” Dick smiled at the young officer, who, for all his intelligence, nevertheless gaped at the redhead in confusion. With a renewed sense of resolved in the face of Lewis’s endearing apprehension, Dick eventually understood how to proceed. His hands found purchase on the other man of their own accord, fingers twisting easily in the dirty material of Lewis’s uniform. He tugged them together, their bodies pressed ankle to knee to hip to shoulder once more, and Dick had never been so grateful for the cramped quality of living out of holes in the ground, for the built-in intimacy such dwellings provided.

“Dick. What, uh—what—?”

“You sure do talk a lot.” Lewis blinked at him owlishly, his ire all but vanished, and Dick added, cheekily, “You’re aware that it’s noise discipline right now.”

“Yes, I’m aware—” Lewis began, affronted, but Dick pushed forward, leaning in to crowd his dark-haired friend’s space, and when Lewis’s brow furrowed at the _closer than already close_ proximity, Dick discovered the last needed ounce of his courage. This time, _he_ kissed _Lewis._

“Oh.”

Lewis murmured this when it was over, his breath a whisper against Dick’s lips. His body was completely languid now, resting, spine-curved into the dirt, and his hands had come to rest against Dick’s chest. He appeared to be in somewhat of a daze. The sight—his eyes blown wide, his lips parted, his face relaxed—amused Dick. It was good to know that even the naïve Pennsylvania farm boy could surprise somebody as sophisticated, worldly, and full of himself as Lewis.

“Oh,” Dick repeated, softly.

“I thought—I mean, you just sat there and…but you don’t—I mean, do you?”

His lips twitched with a barely suppressed grin. Miraculously, Dick felt no shame or trepidation as he confessed, “You might watch me, Lew, but I see you.”

The raw truth of his declaration enveloped them.

“Christ.” Lewis barked a laugh that was entirely too loud and dropped his head back against the earth, eyes skyward. “Way to make me feel like I’m some damn woman. Do you even understand what you’re saying? You _see_ me. That’s, I mean—”

Lewis was blushing and stammering, and Dick considered his embarrassed state to be much more charming than, perhaps, he should have. For someone who not two minutes ago had called Dick naïve and then kissed him, Lewis was doing an awful good impression of a much more modest and inexperienced man.

“Why are you so flustered?” Dick asked.

“How are you so calm? You just kissed me.” The latter half came out as a hiss, and Dick allowed himself a rare smirk, then countered, “You kissed me first.”

Lewis indulged in yet another laugh before he smiled to himself and ran a quivering hand through his dirty hair. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I did. But it’s not my fault. You’re just so damn…” At a loss for words, Lewis cut himself off. “Ah, to hell with it.”

And then, he was kissing Dick once more. Only this time, there was nothing chaste or cautious about it. Dick reveled in the positively filthy press of Lewis’ tongue as it parted Dick’s lips to devour his mouth, lapping at his bottom lip before it dove deeper, licking at the back of his throat, the roof of his mouth, over his teeth. “Goddamn it, Dick,” Lewis panted into his mouth when his tongue finally retreated. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

Dick was breathless, leveled against the earth, pinned beneath Lewis’s weight. His hands grasped desperately at Lewis’s sides, and it took a moment for his head to quit spinning before Dick could gasp out a reply. “I think I have some idea.”

Lewis loomed over him in the darkness, hands bracketed in the soil on either side of Dick’s shoulders, and there was a razor-sharp edge of desperation to his voice when he demanded, “Tell me you want this. Tell me this is okay.”

There was no question about it. Dick brought one hand to Lewis’s face, fingers gently trailing along the rough plane of his cheek to brush over the curve of his ear. “Of course, Lew. Of course, I want you.”

Lewis clamped his eyes shut. “Thank God,” he huffed, then he dipped, and his lips sought to concur Dick yet again.

The experience was overwhelming. Crammed inside the foxhole, every inch of space that wasn’t occupied by his own body was absorbed by Lewis. He was, quite suddenly, _everywhere._ The comforting press of his weight, the electric feel of his limbs—knees slotted between Dick’s open legs, arms digging into Dick’s hips and sides—, the earthy, sweaty scent of him, the searing graze of his lips, the low but steady hum of his voice as he rattled off every obscene thing he wanted to do to Dick.

Dick couldn’t escape him. 

Blinded by his own gratification at the transpiring events, Dick became a ragdoll. He allowed himself to be manhandled by Lewis. And his best friend wasted no time. There in Dick’s foxhole surrounded by their entire company and much of 2d battalion beyond that, his best friend soldiered forward, freeing Dick from the confines of his service uniform. When his cock was exposed to the night air, humid though it was, Dick hissed in spite of himself.

“Fuck, Dick.”

“Isn’t that sort of the point, Lew?” He said this for the express purpose of amusing Lewis, and judging by his best friend’s quick chuckle, he hit the mark, “You’re goddamn right it is.”

It didn’t take long for Dick to grow hard in Lewis’s hand, or for Dick to feel the corresponding press of Lewis’s own erection bulging in his trousers where he was tucked against Dick’s hip.

Delirious and growing madder by the second, Dick lost himself in the sensation of Lewis’s hand pumping his cock, the pleasure of it all building in his balls and behind his eyes, even if the affair was a little rougher and dryer than Dick would have liked. He still couldn’t believe his luck—that Lewis of all people— _Lew_ —was stroking him and kissing him and uttering equally sweet and vulgar nothings against the shell of his ear.

“Can cross this one off the bucket list.” Lewis’s mouth was a grin against Dick’s skin. “Fucking in a foxhole.”

With a struggling breath, Dick managed to huff out, “Are there more— _uh_ —more items on your list?”

“Gotta be honest, Dick.” The dark-haired man’s voice was low and plagued by lust. “The list is—oh, _fuck_ —new, but you can bet your sweet ass—” He gave Dick’s cock a particularly nasty yank, his other hand trailing down to cradle and squeeze Dick’s balls, one finger trailing seductively between the base of Dick’s cock to the sweaty sack. “—that I’ll be adding to it. _Immediately._ ”

“Good.” The grunt was all Dick could muster. His mind was reeling, his body taut with pleasure. He had never desired something, some _one_ more than he craved Lewis in that moment. “ _Lew,”_ the mewl escaped Dick’s mouth before he could stop it, and as the fist around him increased speed, a series of gasps echoed around them.

“Dick, baby, gotta—” Lewis’s body shuddered. “Gotta be quiet.”

But his instructions didn’t register, and as Dick’s soft gasp escalated into heady moans, Lewis was forced to muffle Dick with a hand in his mouth.

Dick knew so many things about Lewis, knew what he liked to drink, knew how much he hated his father, knew the face Lewis made when he was concocting some smartass remark or another, knew when the dark-haired man was lying. But Dick had never dared to imagine that he might come to know how Lewis _tasted_ in his mouth _._ Dick’s teeth and lips clamped down on Lewis’s hand, his tongue flattened helplessly against the flesh in his mouth meant to muffle his whimpers and pants, and Dick was delighted to know that Lewis tasted like salt and dirt, a bead of sweat landing on Dick’s top lip—his or Lewis’s, he would never know. Dick swirled his tongue over a callous on the pad of Lewis’s middle finger, then licked at a small scratch on his palm.

Tomorrow, Dick would go through the day knowing how Lewis’s skin and tongue and lips taste. Would know the intimate feel of their bodies entangled deliciously close. Would know the sounds of Lewis’s pleasure—the grunts and moans and whimpers, the preferred curses and terms of endearment. Would know the sight of desire in Lewis’s dark eyes and the wicked and satisfied twist of Lewis’s lips as he orgasmed.

Dick could not help but think of how he was grateful for this newfound knowledge. Undoubtedly, he was better for it.

It was twilight hour by the time they came back to themselves. Easy and the rest of the Red Forces would rally soon for their final day march into Camp Breckinridge. In the time it took the sun to rise fully over the Kentucky foothills, Dick and Lewis pulled themselves together. Nothing further was said, and though they both knew that Lewis ought to return to his foxhole, he didn’t. Together, they stayed pressed side-by-side in Dick’s foxhole until the sun began to beat down upon them and it was time to move out.

Lewis was the first to clamber free. At the rim of the foxhole, Lewis stretched to his full height and called his sore muscles back to life. Rolling his shoulders, he popped one joint, already wincing in the bright sunlight, then he turned and volunteered a hand to Dick. The corners of Dick’s mouth twitched with a small, covetous smile as he gazed up at his best friend, haloed by the sun, patient and a little sleepy. With a soft thump in his heart, Dick accepted Lewis’s proffered hand and allowed himself to be hauled from his foxhole.

As they marched out that morning, beyond all rational thought, Dick wondered—and hoped—that maybe, just _maybe,_ his and Lewis’s luck wouldn’t run out any time soon. That, perhaps, they would make it through this whole thing and somehow manage to come out the otherwise just as they had begun it—together.

**Author's Note:**

> The series is still open for prompts! [Submit your BoB prompts here,](https://lt-aldo-raine.dreamwidth.org/9202.html) or comment below. :)


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